Bruises
by Feral Phoenix
Summary: Anyone who can touch you can hurt you or heal you. -Roswellxvarious, for Celestial Death Sakura-


Bruises

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Roswell or any of the other main characters of Yggdra Union. This oneshot is for _Celestial Death Sakura_, the 75th reviewer of Dum Spiro Spero.

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…**but I warn you, I have thorns like any rose.**

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_**one.**_** – turn your anger into lust.**

She's like a disease. Like a cancer of the heart, and he's far past the point where it might still be cut out. He's too far gone to be saved. She's inside him now, and can't ever be removed. It fills him with a delicious kind of fear. He's gone over the edge, he knows. And he still can't quite pinpoint the moment when he gave his heart away to the wrong girl.

He doubts it's because he wants to save her. Rosary is a brilliant ruin, a whirlwind that's eaten too much broken glass, a sinking ship, and sometimes he's sure that she's determined to take him with her out of spite. He knows he should leave her, but he can't. They're all wrong for each other, but she still holds him captive. He doesn't know if he can call it love anymore.

There's passion, still. Even if half of their arguments end with his deadened flight from her demanding presence, the other half end with her legs wrapped around his waist and her mouth hungrily seeking his. It's not even making love anymore; it's—something else. Angry sex, furious sex, a quick race to a climax where he loses himself and she holds on calculatingly, so she can use him when he's helpless. When he manages to stagger home, his wrists are rubbed raw from the rope or handcuffs, his soul and body bruised from her abuse. He knows it will end up like this, but he's so sick from wanting that he can't help himself.

He wishes he knew how to get them back to how it began, only a few months back. So that they could be buried in each other, her arms around him and his face in her hair and his hips rocking slow as he slides inside her, listening to her delighted gasps as he moans out his love for her. Her body so soft and warm again, the way it was before she went hard inside and only gave him sharp edges. The sweet honeysuckle scents she used to dab lightly at the nape of her neck, before everything was subsumed with cold metal. How full it used to make him feel when he came.

They've ceased to be lovers, though. He knows he's little more than her slave.

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Roswell sits naked on the edge of the bed and stares blankly into the mirror, dully taking stock of the damage.

Red marks along the side of his throat, circled bite marks in the vulnerable spots on his belly and between his legs. He can't see the scratches down his back, but he feels them. His wrists and ankles are bruised heavily—she tied him so tightly—and there are fainter bruises taking form all across his hips where hers crashed into them over and over.

His face is still red from her slap, slightly swollen from the cheekbone down. His eyes are rimmed with red and too damp, ravaged by the tears.

The mirror can't show the way his heart bleeds.

Did she mean it this time? They've argued so many times, declared everything over, and then been back in each other's arms a few nights later. It's an addiction, after all. But this time—feels different. She never declared her hatred of him so openly before.

It doesn't matter. Even if she does come back to use him, there'll be nothing left of him to use. Just the shell of his body, and God knows she's trained it to perform exactly as she wants. His heart will never be in it again.

But to be honest, what has she ever cared for that?

He'll rest here. Hollow, empty, bruised and used-up. How has it come to this? His first love, his first kiss, his first time, the happily-ever-after that somehow turned into an unending nightmare. He doesn't, can't care anymore. He is betrayed by love, dead inside at eighteen.

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_**two.**_** – blew down the doors to let me in.**

It was a good seven months before war broke out. Roughly two years and three months of going through the motions, and now this.

The new Emperor is young and brazen and fearless, already taller than Roswell and possessed of an exotic kind of allure. Too wild to be considered handsome, too harsh to be considered beautiful. He looks and speaks like he's so much older than his nineteen years, but his directness betrays his youth. Something inside Roswell stirs, not quite captivated.

"War is coming," is what Gulcasa tells him. Simple, to-the-point, even blunt. "I don't know when, but I know that war is coming, and soon."

Roswell waits and wonders dimly if he's supposed to be cowed by the relentless stare of those hot gold eyes. "Why are you telling me this?" he asks at last, unable to bear the silence.

"There's not so much a gap between nineteen and twenty that I haven't heard certain things about you," Gulcasa says, eyelids lowered just slightly enough to be insolent. "Verlaine is Fantasinia's ally; the Branthèse family and not just the people of Esmeralda. The King will have you out on the battlefield surely enough if you don't keep your wits about you."

"Why would I not want to fight?" An ally is an ally. Diplomacy is diplomacy. These things are just more motions to be gone through, more pieces of a life Roswell has lost the will to care for.

"Because you're not suited for combat."

There's that little stirring inside Roswell again, sleepy emotions he's no longer able to recognize. "…What?"

"If you're out on the battlefield the way you are now, not even mustering all the magic in you is going to save you." Roswell's expression must be pretty transparent, because Gulcasa rests his hands on his hips and smiles humorlessly, dangerously. "Don't believe me, do you? Then defend yourself." And he's striding closer, and closer, even prowling steps. "I intend to give you all kinds of pain and harm. Stop me."

Roswell takes a halfhearted step back, then another, and finds himself bumping into the wall. Gulcasa closes the distance between them easily, and there's something like mischief in his eyes when he rests his hands on the bricked granite to prevent Roswell from escaping.

And raises one eyebrow, the picture of bland disappointment. "Now, that's no way to stop anyone, is it?" They're so close together that their lips are almost brushing.

It's all impulse as the restless stirring in Roswell grows too active to ignore. Over the past two years he's gone from the bed of one attractive courtier to the next, giving them what they wanted of him in uncaring abandon. He's never seen their faces, never even cared enough to conjure up Rosary's ghost. But as his body presses hotly to Gulcasa's, as the younger man crushes him to the wall, Roswell is aware of no one and nothing else.

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It's a tryst like a lightning strike, lovemaking like a sudden awakening from a long deep sleep. He never took pleasure in Rosary's violence, never even knew much more than dull satisfaction towards the end that she was as addicted as he. But Gulcasa's brutality is somehow erotic and thrilling and wakes up something primal that Roswell never knew was sleeping within him. It's hot and intense, and when it's over, Roswell is left feeling exhilarated like he hasn't since… he's _never _felt like this. Every part of him is tingling and his senses are sharp and bright again, as if he really were sleeping or in a fog.

He aches, but it's not unpleasant. It's actually satisfying, which leaves Roswell a little bemused. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Gulcasa stretches in an almost feline motion, and it nearly makes Roswell smile. He's too surprised to when he realizes it.

"That's not what's going to happen if you can't stop your enemy on the battlefield," Gulcasa says mildly, as if he's taking it all as a matter of course—as if he's overtaken by the spontaneity of impulsive lust every day. "If you _do_ find yourself in that situation, I suggest you try a bit harder."

Roswell is silent for a while, watching the new Emperor dress. "…Why the warning?" he asks at last.

Gulcasa walks back to the edge of the bed and looks down at him, at once alien and compelling and a bit frightening and almost compassionate. "…When the dust clears, I'd like to know that at least some of those who aren't suited to fight are still standing. I meant what I said, my lord of Branthèse; that great bruised heart of yours will only hurt you more in battle." And then he sits and leans down and rests his mouth to Roswell's in a kind of warmth and tenderness that takes him completely by surprise.

Roswell is still wondering in his fresh awareness and these strange words long after Gulcasa has left the manor.

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_**three.**_** – faith and desire and the swing of your hips.**

Roswell has come to understand that the emptiness and long sleep were part of _loneliness._

As a member of the Royal Army, he is around people who he knows _do _care for him. That eases some of the loneliness, but he would feel so much more lost and out of his depth without _her._

It began not long after she joined them. She smiled an invitation from her tent flap one evening when he was particularly lonely; knowing he needed warmth and care in any form, he'd gone to join her. Within a few minutes they were naked and tangled and straining across her bedroll. It had been a while and so he fell asleep afterwards; for the first time since the beginning with Rosary, he woke the next morning with the warmth of a woman beside him. It filled his heart in welcome ways that hurt, and so he stayed with her the next night, and the next.

She is older than him, and experienced, and pleasures him as thoroughly as he pleasures her. He can sink into her warmth and the riot of her ash-brown curls and kiss her full breasts and lie with her and know she won't willfully hurt him. In the chaos of the war, he knows he needs the simplicity of their affair. He needs a warm bed where he won't sleep alone; he needs a lover's touch.

They make love in the twilight, and when they wake with the dawn. He sinks into her and into her and doesn't think when their bodies come together, is able to glory in her husky laughter and the way he wants to cry out.

He thinks that maybe this is what he's been looking for, been waiting for, as the days stretch into weeks and then months.

--

He tells her that in the morning when they wake, and Mistel smiles and shakes her head.

"It does a lot for both of us that we can enjoy each other," she tells him. "You haven't had much of that lately, and I've missed having a man in my bed. Roswell, I've done what I can to help you, but I know I'm not the one you need to set your sights on."

He's surprised and a little disconcerted by this. She can see that, and rises on her elbow, resting the side of her face in her palm as she looks down at him warmly.

"There's so much hurt and confusion in you," she says. "Not as much as when we became lovers, it's true, but there are too many wounded places in you that I can't reach. It's not your fault; it's not mine. This is passion, pleasure, and healing; it's not love."

He understands what she means, but not what they're supposed to do now. "Does this… mean that you and I…?"

She laughs, which makes her breasts move in an interesting and rather distracting way. "Oh, of course not. You're a long way off from finding the one who can mend your heartaches, and the war will be _long _over before I let you out of my bed." And then she laughs again, shrugging in the tight confines of the bedroll. "Such as it is."

She opens her arms, and Roswell lets the need rise up and consume him. He sinks into the warmth and comfort of her body. She doesn't bruise him any more than he bruises her; there's only gentle movement and pleasure that aches unbearably and the soft gasps and moans they don't have to stifle.

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_**four. **_**– nobody knows me as well as you do.**

Roswell parted from Mistel not because he found that someone he needed more than any other, but because unexpectedly he stumbled into someone who needed _him._

She's taught him well enough to know that neither is this love, and he makes sure his new lover understands that. It is comfort. It is healing. It is the broken seeking solace with the broken as they struggle to relearn touch and forget the scars of the past.

Roswell knows that Rosary hurt him; he knows their relationship was unhealthy. It's only seeing another victim of abuse that begins to unravel the sick love he felt.

Nessiah is an inexperienced lover—often clumsy, painfully shy and cautious. Roswell doesn't mind it; it instills a great tenderness in him, a soft devotion and need he sometimes has trouble expressing. He is patient. He knows why Nessiah finds it so difficult to touch or be touched.

If Roswell is the one end of the spectrum, then Nessiah is the other. Rosary enslaved him in the end, so that more often than not their coupling only had a thin veil separating it from rape. He loved her—foolishly perhaps—and sought fulfillment in it anyway, and couldn't stop seeking fulfillment in sex. And in so doing, lost sight of what it should have been, what it now is to him. It was empty and mindless then; now it fills his heart and soul.

Roswell knows the long-ago story of what made Nessiah the way he is. Instead of a drug, sex was an unspeakable horror to him for so long. It was only loving someone, and recognizing the brokenness in Roswell, that opened him up to see things differently.

Roswell knows to be careful. There can be no sudden, brutal awakening, the way Gulcasa began to heal him; the slightest hint of roughness will make Nessiah retreat into himself. He must instead emulate Mistel—offer up his body, or the most tender and mildest of joinings. He isn't in love with Nessiah, but he does love the shattered angel. So he will take the slow steps they both need to put themselves back together—until they find the people who can complete the healing they're attempting to begin.

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"I don't deserve you," Nessiah murmurs one night.

Roswell has had this thought many times. He didn't deserve Gulcasa, or Mistel, and doesn't deserve the eye-opening and sometimes heartbreaking experience of Nessiah.

"You deserve better than me," is what he replies.

And another night: "Do you really believe that there are people who will take us for the broken sinners that we are, even after all the mistakes we've made?"

Roswell slowly slides his arms around Nessiah's thin body and nuzzles into his shoulder.

"Even the worst of mistakes can be considered little steps on the right road," he says. "If I thought there would never be someone for me, I wouldn't be able to keep moving forward. I don't want to live that way, do you?"

Nessiah's hand rests on his arm in a soft metallic chime, his chains resting along the side of Roswell's thigh. "You're right… I don't."

They don't make love, but they sleep side by side. Roswell knows that Nessiah will turn to him if or when he's ready; he is learning as he leads Nessiah down the path of healing just what he should look for in the one who will complete him. And her picture is growing stronger in his mind.

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_**five. **_**– there's no amount of reason to save me.**

From Yggdra, the question is so natural, like breathing.

Roswell should have known so long before. He's always been easy around her, after all; he's always trusted and loved her. He just didn't understand the depth of it until the time he found himself single and drifting towards her yet again.

They speak, they hold hands; she doesn't ask him about Rosary but he finds himself telling her everything she might think to ask. And all she does is hold on to him—no condemnation, no abject pity, just sympathy and affection. And when she does, he feels the tears inside him begin to mend.

They've kissed, a few times—Yggdra always blushing like mad and Roswell's heart racing—but they haven't gone to bed. And for him, that's the most telling sign of all.

"Do you want to stay with me?"

Roswell hesitates, smiles. "I do. You fill me up inside, my Queen."

"Do you think we could stay together for a long time?" she asks now.

He reaches out to take her hand, leans into her side. "I would never doubt it."

"So—someday, would you consider becoming my true royal consort?"

She is blushing bright red, and he cannot help but be charmed. He gathers up her hands and lays them against his chest, resting his forehead to hers.

"Once my heart is fully whole again… yes. I can't even consider being apart from you, after all the searching I've done to find you."

She smiles, and he knows in his heart that this is right. The last of the marks must be beginning to fade away.

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"Why choose me?" is what he has to ask, later. He knows that she knows she is the only one who can save him, and a tiny corner of his still-wounded heart worries that she's only reached out to him because of that empathy.

She turns to him as they sit in the garden swing, and smiles as she leans into his side.

"Because you trusted me," she tells him, and this he did not expect. "From the beginning, before either of us had any idea, you reached out to me and had faith that I wouldn't tear you apart. Because you have a kind of wisdom that I don't. Because you're gentle, and strong. And beautiful—though that's the most shallow reason of them all, I think." She laughs a little, soft and shy and self-conscious. "And, most of all… because I know that even though you could hurt me so easily, you'll always try your hardest not to."

He doesn't know what to say. He doesn't think he's received a greater or more heartfelt compliment from anyone.

"You can't be worried after all this that you might make a bad king?" she asks, teasing a little. "I wouldn't have expected that from you…"

He smiles a little and gathers his courage to press a light kiss to her hair. "Not that, no. I know that all I need to do is all I've always done… follow along where you lead."

They don't speak; they only hold each other. And right down to the depths of his fragile soul, Roswell _knows _that this is right. The addict in him is silent; he might want more someday, but for now, just this is enough. Just being near her would be enough to save him; to know she feels the way she does is the greatest blessing he has ever been given. And he will do what he can to cherish it as it should be.

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_**Anyone who can touch you can hurt you or heal you.**_

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**(hajimemashita)**


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